Unknown Chaplin

The difficulty with films about great artists, whether dramas or documentaries, is that the creative process is by nature an internal one, making it nearly impossible to convey to an audience the inspiration or dedication involved in translating a work of art from the mind of the artist onto the canvass or the screen. As a result, even the most thoroughly researched documentaries or expertly written biographical films tend to end up dealing with the artists' outward frustrations and only superficially making connections between events in their lives and the art that grows out of it. That is what makes Thames Television's three-part documentary Unknown Chaplin (1983) so extraordinary. Chaplin worked in a way that no other filmmaker dared: he approached the making of his films without a story--at times even without the germ of an idea--improvising from something as simple as a man eating in a cafe until he had developed one of his legendary two-reel silent comedies. The real difference with Chaplin is that he did his improvising directly on film. Although most of these "rushes" were burned at Chaplin's direction, film archivists Kevin Brownlow and David Gill were allowed access to Chaplin's own film vaults, where they discovered enough surviving footage to give an uncanny insight into the great comedian's creative process. Painstakingly piecing together the numbers outtakes from thousands of hours of footage, we are able to see some of Chaplin's works from genesis to fruition. The first episode, My Happiest Years, focuses on Chaplin's days while under contrast to produce a dozen comedy shorts in a year for Mutual Film Corporation. Brownlow and Gill first focus on The Cure, a short that began merely with the idea of using a health spa as a setting. Through a collection of rushes we see Chaplin trying out various ideas, and how one would lead to another. For example, Chaplin begins with an attendant having difficulty wheeling an elderly patient into the entrance of the spa, and little by little drops elements (including the elderly patient) and adds others until he has developed a veritable traffic-jam of wheelchairs. Ultimately, the entire sequence would be scrapped. Chaplin himself would try on several roles, from attendant, to page, to visitor, while one of his stock players would appear as a inebriated guest. After literally dozens of permutations, Chaplin would finally cast himself as the inebriate, and the story would work itself out around him. One of the most fascinating sequences of this episode is devoted to the short The Immigrant, which began with nothing more that the idea of Chaplin eating at an artists' cafe. We see Chaplin trying out a myriad of unrelated thoughts and themes, only to watch them jell into a masterpiece (and one of his best-loved shorts) through a special synchronicity of genius. The second episode, The Great Director, finds Chaplin freed from the time constraints of the Mutual contract as he builds his own studio, and strikes an agreement with First National Pictures to produce eight feature length films, this time with no time limit on when he would deliver them. With total creative freedom, Chaplin was at last able to give free reign to his creative genius: something that would cause quite a bit of distress for both his stock company of actors and First National, as he would sometimes go for days (or even weeks) at a time when his creative instincts would fail him. The episode includes rare unused footage from The Gold Rush, The Kid, and others, and features interviews with Jackie Coogan—best known to modern audiences as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family TV series—who co-starred with Chaplin in The Kid, as well as Georgia Hale from The Gold Rush, Virginia Cherrill from City Lights, and co-star (and former spouse) Lita Grey, all of whom offer observations on the difficulties of dealing with Chaplin's unique working style. One of the highlights of the episode is a film showing Chaplin and Coogan cavorting on camera in front of a group of First National executives, who invited themselves to the studio due to their nervousness over Chaplin's slow progress in producing The Kid. Hidden Treasures, the final episode, presents comparisons between Mutual footage that Chaplin shot, working out ideas that would not make it into the shorts, and later variations that would appear in his feature length films (one friend quipped that Chaplin's mind was like an attic, where things were stored but never thrown away). The most striking is the memorable barber scene from The Great Dictator, reflected in footage shot decades earlier that had remained unused; as well as a lengthy early sequence about a man with a flea circus, which would eventually be echoed in Limelight. The series winds up with and astonishing seven minute sequence that was originally filmed to open City Lights, but was later dropped. The entire sequence involves The Little Tramp's efforts to remove a small piece of wood that has become wedge in a grill on the pavement. Narrated by James Mason Unknown Chaplin is an outstanding, enlightening documentary that is an absolute must, not only for fans of the great comedian, who will undoubtedly be delighted with the opportunity to see complete scenes that were cut whole-cloth from Chaplin's films, but also shouldn't be missed by anyone who is interested in the creative process. A&E Home Video's new DVD of the documentary includes two short "making of" featurettes, as well as a seven minute film of Chaplin meeting legendary British Music Hall star Harry Lauder. To order The Unknown Chaplin, go to TCM Shopping. by Fred Hunter

Playgoers and critics have long wondered about the enigmatic Hamlet of William Shakespeare or longed to know the secret behind Mona Lisa's smile in the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. What if one day someone found Shakespeare's initial drafts for his play or Da Vinci's early sketches for Mona Lisa? Something like that very thing happened with one of the greatest artists in movie history - Charles Chaplin. Chaplin never meant them to be seen. His brother Sydney, who jealously guarded his brother's business enterprises, avidly collected all the out-takes and unused sequences from his famous sibling's movies from 1916 on, keeping them in a warehouse at Chaplin's studio. When Charles Chaplin left America during the Red Scare of the early 1950's, he sent word back to his loyal cameraman of 40-plus years, Roland Totheroh, to destroy every bit of this massive collection. Why did Chaplin want it all destroyed? This may never be known. Totheroh was too good an employee to question the wishes of his long-time employer, so he gathered all the material and sent it off to the incinerators. Somehow, however, a lot of the reels did not reach the flames. Instead, this incredibly valuable footage found its way into the hands of Raymond Rohauer, the Los Angeles-area film collector. Rohauer may have enjoyed watching the material privately, but there was nothing he could do with it. If word had gotten back to Chaplin that the footage still existed, he would almost certainly have demanded it be destroyed. It was only after Chaplin's death, that British film historian Kevin Brownlow and his documentary-making partner David Gill discovered Rohauer's stash while making their series Hollywood (1980). Coordinating with the Chaplin estate, Brownlow and Gill recovered the material from Rohauer, receiving a van tightly packed with reel after reel of unseen Chaplin footage. Some of the material, sadly, had deteriorated beyond repair due to nitrate damage, but the rest provided an incredible insight into the work of the most famous filmmaker of all time. Episode 1 of Unknown Chaplin (1982), the documentary crafted from this material by Brownlow and Gill for Thames Television, deals with a handful of shorts Chaplin made for the Mutual Film Corporation in 1916 and 1917. Chaplin, who once told his cameraman Totheroh, "Film's cheap!" would build sets or set up a premise with no script and few specific ideas. With camera rolling, Chaplin would meticulously work out gag after gag as these surviving out-takes show. In The Floorwalker (1916), Chaplin puts an escalator in a department store then builds a story around it, requiring him to always run the wrong way down the moving staircase. In Behind the Screen (1916) Chaplin works out an elaborate gag involving footage running backwards, a sequence that did not survive the final cut. The Cure (1917) goes through take after take built around a story that sees Charlie as a bellboy in a posh health spa. Only after working and re-working the material does he discover he needs to be in another role. The biggest changes of all come in another 1917 short, this one built around Chaplin's fear of aggressive waiters. Working backwards from a caf¿equence, Chaplin creates a meeting place for him and his heroine, a ship bringing new arrivals to America. As the rushes show, an idea for an inauspicious comedy bit led to one of his greatest triumphs, The Immigrant (1917). The Unknown Chaplin is one of the most wonderful insights into the processes of an artist ever provided. Had Chaplin succeeded in having this material consigned to the flames, it would have been an incalculable loss, not only for film lovers, but also the history of 20th Century art. Writers/Producers: Kevin Brownlow and David Gill Narrator: James Mason Music arranger/conductor: Carl Davis Video Editors: Terry Badham, Grant Goodwin, Tom Kavanagh Film Editor: Trevor Waite BW & C-53m. by Brian Cady

"Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," said the English social reformer Jane Ellice Hopkins. An easy sentiment if you are an artist whose materials consist of nothing more than a pen and a blank page or paints and canvas. However, when your medium is motion pictures, taking pains can mean thousands of dollars a minute and studio heads breathing down your neck while you wait for that drop of inspiration. Charles Chaplin was a genius, a genius of movie comedy. In episode 2 of Kevin Brownlow's and David Gill's documentary Unknown Chaplin (1983), we see just how painful it sometimes was to bring that genius to the screen. The first example is The Kid (1921), the first feature film Chaplin directed. By this point, Chaplin was so popular he not only had total artistic control over his films, he had even built his own studio just to create them. Here Chaplin would continue to make features in much the same way he had made his shorts, building sets around his unfinished ideas and shooting take after take as he devised comic bits of business. Meanwhile a crew on full salary would stand around, waiting for the moment when Chaplin would need their services. This process was not fast enough for those who had hired him and were paying for all this. First National, later to be absorbed into Warner Brothers a few years after the coming of sound, were a loose confederation of movie theater exhibitors who had the idea of forming their own studio to supply them with films. Snagging Chaplin was quite a coup for the young company, but a steady engine of motion picture production Chaplin was not. Meanwhile, features were taking over from shorts as the primary content of an evening at the cinema and Chaplin realized he had to take the plunge that lessened his already paltry output of short comedies. The shooting of The Kid took a year and a half but when he was finished, Chaplin had created a masterpiece that enthralled audiences and set a new benchmark that other comedians strove to reach in vain. The next feature in this episode is Chaplin's first starring movie for the film company he formed with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith, United Artists. The Gold Rush (1925) would be Chaplin's biggest hit of the silent era but, as Unknown Chaplin shows, his attempt to film the comedy under the snowbound conditions of Truckee, California, site of the Donner Party disaster of the 19th Century, were bound to fail given Chaplin's slow and meticulous methods. He quickly returned to his studio. The last is City Lights, released in 1931. Shooting, however, began over two years before and in a different film world. On December 27, 1928, the first day of shooting, talkies dominated the movie world but had not yet pushed silent movies out of the running. All the major studios were still producing them. By the time Chaplin finished however, his silent comedy was an anachronism. Nevertheless, it was a very successful film, a testament to Chaplin's talent and star power. As rare home movie footage shot behind the scenes shows in this episode of Unknown Chaplin, it was not the coming of sound that caused the long shooting schedule, but rather one small detail of the story; how does a blind flower girl mistake a tramp for a rich man? Only a star and director of Chaplin's greatness could have combined these incredibly high standards of film making with the time and money necessary for perfection. Unknown Chaplin details the slow and painful process sometimes required to create the illusion of effortless storytelling. Writers/producers: Kevin Brownlow, David Gill Narrator: James Mason Music: Charles Chaplin, Carl Davis Cinematography: Ted Adcock Film Editor: Trevor Waite Video Editor: Tom Kavanagh BW & C-53 min. by Brian Cady